Catalyst

by Kincaid,S. J.

  And suddenly Tom remembered it. He peered down at himself through hazy vision, at his bruised skin, all over, and what looked like a scorched red sunburn over his arms.

  “You survived forty-seven seconds with no space suit, Raines,” Blackburn reminded him, seeing the damage, too. “I need you to look around the suborbital. Let me see your situation.”

  Tom forced himself to look around the sterile aft compartment of the suborbital plane, and at Blackburn’s direction, strapped himself into a chair.

  “Good. We don’t want you getting hurt when gravity kicks in.”

  “How?” Tom’s voice hurt his throat.

  “Once the neural link reactivated and I saw your situation, I contacted Medusa. Given the events of the day, well, you can see that we’ve been in close contact all day. She interfaced with the suborbital, popped open the air lock before you reached it—fine job aiming your momentum, by the way—and repressurized this suborbital. I wasn’t sure you’d come around, but you’ve surprised me again. She’s flying you back to Earth right now. I’ll come in person and retrieve you as soon as you touch down. You need to wait for me.”

  His words were lost on Tom. Secondary only to the awareness he was alive, was the awareness Medusa was here. She was in control of this ship. She was here.

  Tom closed his eyes, floating in the ship, imagining her in his arms, and he could finally tell her what he’d realized. He’d tell her he loved her.

  HE CAME TO awareness when the suborbital thumped to Earth.

  “Wait here. You need to wait,” Blackburn said, and disappeared from his vision center.

  Tom struggled to his feet, unable to believe he could possibly be on Earth again, needing to see it. He forced his way through the hatch, and the world exploded into his vision center.

  He stumbled out, the enormity of the sky above him, Earth below his feet, overstimulating his senses. Awe and sheer disbelief overwhelmed him.

  Tom’s legs were unfeeling jelly. He couldn’t comprehend of the enormity of the sky, the vivid atmosphere a stark blue crushing down from above him, heavy with swollen white clouds. The smell of grass overwhelmed him, the feel of rich, damp earth, the sound of trees hissing in the wind. It all bombarded him until he grew dumb and strange like he’d been born totally new to the world.

  He found himself sitting on the ground, his palms brushing over the damp, squishy earth, grass tickling his palms. It was all a miracle. Some incredible miracle, the enormity of which he’d never appreciated until today. He only vaguely noticed the pain flaring all over him, his skin aching and red with the worst sunburn of his life and the strain where his tissue had swollen as he floated through the vacuum.

  He’d survived. He was back on Earth.

  Earth!

  Tom kept closing and opening his eyes, expecting to wake up from this fantastic dream. Surely he hadn’t survived blasting himself out into space . . .

  Voices reached his ears. Tom couldn’t seem to move, couldn’t make his brain work, and was still sitting there dumbly when the family of campers came upon his suborbital, conversation floating into his ear.

  “Where do you think that came from?”

  “Did it crash? Is the pilot okay?”

  “I don’t see any smoke. Maybe an emergency landing?”

  Tom sat there, feeling strange and disoriented, and then they were staring at him. A middle-aged man and woman, frizzy hair and sturdy clothes, astonished to see him. Their children peered out from behind them.

  “Are you all right?” the woman asked him. “Were you a passenger? Are your parents in there?”

  Tom couldn’t remember how to speak for a long moment.

  “Our whole congregation is camping nearby,” the man offered. “We have a doctor. Is there anyone hurt inside?”

  Tom managed to shake his head.

  The man looked him over uncertainly, then said, “You don’t look too well yourself. Maybe we can help you.”

  “I have to . . .” Tom realized his voice was the faintest whisper. It took effort to raise it, to say, “I’m waiting.”

  The man gestured for his family to step back and drew toward Tom, but then he halted abruptly. His expression shifted from one of concern to something flat and empty. His stared at Tom unblinkingly for a protracted moment.

  Then he said, “Vanya?”

  Tom’s heart seized. His breath strangled him. His gaze riveted upward, the world going very still.

  “How did you get here, Vanya?” the man said.

  Tom jolted to his feet so fast, he stumbled back against the ship behind him, terror in his heart. He looked at the woman, and suddenly her face shifted, too, grew blank, her eyes empty.

  “You escaped. How interesting,” she noted. “I can’t imagine how you managed that.”

  Tom couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t. He was hearing Vengerov’s tones—almost seeing Vengerov’s facial expression—but it was coming from these people. And when he stumbled back, one of the children warned him in Vengerov’s tones.

  “There’s nowhere to run, Vanya.”

  “Stop that!” Tom screamed at them, looking from one face to the other in abject horror. “Get away from me!”

  He didn’t even know what he was doing, where he was going. He tore away from them, his legs suddenly bounding forward without him ordering them to, driven by a sort of animal panic because he had not, he had not shot that window and risked death to escape only for Vengerov to find him somehow. . . .

  But when Tom stumbled into a clearing, fighting for breath, he realized he’d happened upon the other campers. Dozens of people milling about, with cabins, campfires, in groups, lounging alone.

  For a hopeful moment, Tom thought he’d escaped the menace. He thought he was in the clear because no one seemed to have noticed him, and maybe he could duck into a tent or something.

  Silence dropped over the campground, everyone halting what they were doing at the exact same moment.

  Their heads all turned to him. The word echoed across the clearing, one pair of lips to another.

  “Vanya.”

  “Vanya. Vanya.”

  Tom blindly stumbled back, his hands flying up to clutch his head because he felt like he’d gone insane, like this was it, he’d lost his mind. Or maybe he’d died. He died out in space in that void and now here he was in some hideous hell where Vengerov would follow him everywhere he went, whatever he tried, and he could never escape Vanya. . . .

  He hit something warm and solid and began screaming like a madman. Someone shook him and he kept screaming. He couldn’t stop. The voice broke through his insanity, familiar, low.

  “Quiet. Quiet! It’s me!”

  Tom stilled, gradually realizing it was Blackburn’s arms locked around him, and he gasped for breath, terrible apprehension bursting through him along with a dreadful certainty any minute now, he’d hear that word from him, too. Hear it. Hear Blackburn say it . . .

  “Tom, it’s me. Okay?” The hand stroked his hair.

  Tom calmed. He’d said “Tom.” Not “Vanya.” “Tom.”

  He would’ve collapsed to the ground then if Blackburn hadn’t been holding him up. All his strength was gone. There were people from the campground closing in on them, a great big crowd, and Blackburn cursed, then swiped something out of his pocket and hurled it at them, the world exploding in a sort of stinging fog.

  Tom felt himself dragged up, hauled along across the bumpy earth.

  “We have to leave here. We can’t be seen again. Not by anyone,” Blackburn rasped. “Medusa landed you as close to me as possible, but we’ll have to relocate now. Vengerov will already have drones headed this way.”

  “She has to hide,” Tom cried breathlessly. “You have to tell her Vengerov knows there’s another ghost. He’ll figure out it’s her. She’s the only other person who’s had a neural graft.”

  “Relax. She knows. Let’s take care of you.”

  Tom closed his eyes, the world swaying about him. “I don�
�t even know what month it is.”

  “It’s March.”

  “Three months? I’ve been gone three months?”

  “Fifteen months, Tom.”

  Tom went still. Only Blackburn drove him onward, because he was so stunned his brain had gone blank.

  He was almost eighteen years old now.

  Tom’s eyes opened and he looked back at the haze where the campers were, his mind working out what had happened. Flashes of memory came to him, those times Vengerov had spent in his mind, using him to do it. Those times Vengerov checked on the progress of his nanomachines, skipped from mind to mind as they infiltrated, as they reached critical mass, as Austere-grade processors began to ping Obsidian Corp.’s central database, signaling that they were up and running . . .

  Despair flooded him. Tom wished suddenly that he’d never escaped. That he’d died out in space.

  Anything would be better than the realization everything they’d done, every struggle, every gesture, had been for absolutely nothing.

  The Austere-grade processors were everywhere. In everyone.

  Joseph Vengerov owned the entire world.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  AFTER THAT, EVERYTHING began to blur. Tom had no sense of time just like he was still in the enclosure. He felt on fire all over from his sunburn and was only vaguely aware of Blackburn’s voice, murmuring something to him about still having malicious code in a number of machines, including this hybrid helicopter.

  “We’re off the grid right now.”

  “Where are we going next?” Tom’s voice was a croak.

  “There’s one sure safe haven for us. We’ll go there and mount a resistance.”

  “Resistance? He has everyone.”

  “We have two weapons he doesn’t: you and Medusa.”

  “I’m useless. He took everything I downloaded at the Spire.”

  “If you were useless, he would have killed you. He didn’t. He kept you alive because you have a power he doesn’t. We can still use that.”

  Tom laughed wildly, hysterically. “Yeah, a tool. A weapon. Just like you told Heather before knocking her down the vactube. Guess it’s your turn to use it, huh?”

  Blackburn said nothing. Tom dragged his gaze over and found the man watching him, an odd, thoughtful expression on his face as the helicopter swayed. Tom realized suddenly his entire body was vibrating like he was freezing cold, his teeth chattering. His palms felt clammy, his skin stinging all over, blisters forming where he’d been exposed to the sun. He caught the faintest reflection in the window as he turned his head, his shaggy hair in his face. He wondered suddenly how deranged he had to look.

  Blackburn seemed to make up his mind. He changed their direction in the sky. “But we’re not starting right away. We need . . . we need a few days. A pit stop.”

  Tom didn’t ask why. Everything was beyond his control. He was used to that.

  HE DIDN’T REMEMBER Blackburn landing, much less how he’d woken up tucked in a bed. He sat up, pain scorching his burned skin, eyes stinging as he peered around at the stained floorboards of the run-down cabin.

  There was a scraping sound outside. Tom’s muscles grew rigid. He shoved aside the covers, yanked on the overlarge trousers and T-shirt that had been folded on a chair, then gulped down a tepid glass of water on the bedside table.

  He still didn’t have his wits fully about him as he shoved open a creaky door to find Blackburn kneeling outside on the scorched desert earth, finishing up his work cutting strips of some dusky material, camouflaging the hybrid copter to blend it with the landscape.

  He squinted at Tom in the sunlight, his skin leathery and creased in the harsh daylight. “You’re awake.”

  For a moment, Tom stared at him bleakly, his brain sluggish. His skin stung all over with his sunburn, angry blisters of fluid scattered over it.

  “We’re in Mexico,” Blackburn told him, answering a question Tom hadn’t asked. “Way off the beaten track.”

  For a while, there was silence, and Tom stood there dumbly, disoriented.

  “General Marsh arranged it.”

  “Marsh?” Tom said, startled.

  “When it became clear the Austere-grade processors were spreading, he set up a network of safe houses, and stashed some munitions, ships. Anything he could get away with.” He clenched his jaw. “At his instruction, I deleted all his memory of it as soon as his own processor came online.”

  Tom thought of Marsh, his eyes glassy, foggy. Like those campers. Another puppet of Vengerov. A cold shudder moved through him.

  Blackburn heaved himself up and Tom noticed him shuffling as he walked, avoiding weight on his leg. He’d been shot at the Spire. Tom remembered that.

  “How’s your leg?”

  “Painful, but nothing important was hit.”

  “Sorry.”

  “This wasn’t you.”

  Tom’s hair flopped into his eyes. He batted it away irritably, stinging the skin on his forehead.

  “You should get out of the sun,” Blackburn said. “Get more sleep.”

  “I’m okay,” Tom managed, swatting his hair away again.

  “I can cut that for you,” Blackburn offered unexpectedly.

  Tom stared at him uncomprehendingly for a long moment. “You . . . cut hair?” For some reason, that seemed utterly bizarre to him. “That’s in your neural processor?”

  Blackburn snorted. He rooted in a tool kit lying open beside him, pulled out some scissors. “It’s not rocket science. All I need is a bowl.”

  “God, no.” Tom reached out and yanked the scissors from him, then edged away quickly. “I’ll do it myself real quick.”

  For some reason, as Tom raised the scissors, Blackburn watched Tom’s every move like something was going to go very wrong. Tom snipped away at his hair, grown long and shaggy. He’d done this a thousand times as a kid.

  The thought brought something spiraling to the forefront of his mind.

  “My dad!” Tom cried. He jolted toward Blackburn, ignoring the way the lieutenant grabbed his wrist and tried to work the scissors from his grasp. “Oh no, Vengerov knows I escaped, he’ll use my father again—”

  “He won’t.” With a firm yank, Blackburn tore Tom’s grip away from the scissors and tucked them away.

  “Why not? How do you know? He took all his memories of me. My dad won’t even know to be on guard!”

  “That tactic worked the last time because you were alone and you were unwilling to sacrifice him. Joseph Vengerov knows this time that you’re in my possession, and I am willing to let your father die.”

  “No! He can’t die! You can’t—”

  “I’m not saying he will,” Blackburn told him. “I am saying Joseph Vengerov knows that I’ll allow it. Think about it, Tom. That means your father won’t die. Vengerov won’t kill him. He’s not leverage against me, and I’m the one who has you. He’ll keep him for leverage against you—in case something ever does happen to me.”

  That calmed Tom a bit, but only a bit. He looked up at the merciless blue sky, glaring with sunlight that made his skin sting. His head was swimming, every breath scorching his lungs.

  “Funny how you’re talking about that like it’s a question of whether he’ll kill you,” Tom mumbled. “He controls the whole world. How can you possibly hide forever?”

  Blackburn slanted him up a fierce look. “It’s not over.”

  “He won.” Tom pressed his fists to his temples. “I helped him win.”

  “That wasn’t you. And he hasn’t won. He may control the bulk of the population with Austere-grade processors, but he doesn’t control those of us with Vigilant-grade processors.” Blackburn tapped his temple. “Not yet.”

  “Until he decides to reprogram all of those, too.”

  “When that happens, yes, he’ll have won.” Blackburn’
s eyes were hard. “But we’re not going to let it.”

  “We?”

  “I know you said he took everything you’ve downloaded.” He smiled, crinkling his eyes. “Who, you idiot boy, do you think wrote every program you downloaded at the Spire, hmm?”

  Tom looked down. Of course. Blackburn had.

  “It was my knowledge, encoded in my processor, rendered into downloadable form for all of you. I need a few days at most to give you the most critical information. We can get started now.”

  He stepped toward Tom and Tom jolted back reflexively.

  “Relax,” Blackburn said easily. “I will unlock your processor and—” He paused, eyes riveted to Tom’s neck. Tom wasn’t even sure what he was looking at for a long moment, until Blackburn said, “You still have that restraining node. Is it stuck?”

  It was strange, until that moment, Tom hadn’t even realized it was there. Burned out, nonfunctional, but still hooked into his neural access port. He’d worn it for so long he never noticed it anymore. He reached up automatically to tug it out, but stopped, his hand going still.

  A great pit opened up inside him that made Tom feel like he was going to be sucked down. Sweat pricked up all over him. He dared not touch it.

  “Let me see it—” And then Blackburn reached for Tom’s neck.

  He. Reached. For. Tom’s. Neck.

  Tom jerked back hard enough to slam against the rickety door of the cabin, only half aware of the scream ripping from his lips. “Get away from me!”

  Blackburn just stood there with his hand in the air. Tom’s heart pounded so hard it felt like it was going to rip its way out of his chest.

  “Get back,” Tom warned him, fighting for breath. He felt like he was going to explode out of his own skin, so desperate was his sudden need to escape. “Don’t do that. Don’t do that ever!”

  “Tom—” He drew a step closer.

  “Get away or I’ll rip you apart, I swear!”

  Blackburn raised his palms in surrender, watching him closely.